D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

Put together with #3159, I take it you contend that participating in establishing a shared fiction in the course of playing is not common to all RPGs.

No. Declaring an action for one's PC typically means participating in establishing a shared fiction.

But one can participate there in to a greater or less degree. Which is to say there can be greater or less degrees of agency in that respect.

All the definitions you cite appear to be binaries. You either produced an action or intervention or not. You either had the capacity or not. You either had the condition or not. You either had the state or not.

Capacity admits of degrees. Power, and its exertion, admits of degrees. Intervention that produces an outcome admits of degrees - one's role in that production can be modest, significant or total.

what I’m saying is that since the word agency is soo contentious, if we want to have a discussion over more than it’s meaning then we should drop the word and talk the concepts without it. I don’t know why anyone would object to that?

If I were to assert that playing Burning Wheel as per the rulebook gives players more capacity to participate in establishing the shared fiction, then does playing (say) the 3E module Speaker in Dreams as written, that would be contentious.

The point of contention isn't the terminology. There are two points of contention: (1) that it is possible to produce rich, coherent, vibrant, verisimilitudinous fiction in RPGing through means other than GM authorship and curation; and (2) that (1) can take place without players exercising what has been called in this thread "player narrative control", or conch-passing narration rights.

The basis for my assertion in the previous paragraph is that I see (1) and (2) routinely denied whatever terminology is used to describe them.

How about ‘agency in respect of establishing the shared fiction while respecting a DM curated world in the course of playing a RPG’?

Isn't that just a reduced or deferential form of the agency I described?

 

[pemerton]

Agency doesn't necessarily equate to more fun

Who has asserted the opposite? Clearly, for instance, some people prefer to play roulette to chess.

 

[clearstream]

Far too general for what? It's not far too general for me to contrast (say) railroading/"GM story hour" with (say) Burning Wheel played as per the rulebook.

See my #3165. Is it right that you're claiming that being able to declare actions for one's PC is too general to make any contrasts, while participating in establishing a shared fiction in the course of playing is not.

 

[Maxperson]

One of the things that is compared is the amount of agency enjoyed in the game or at the table. For instance, those who have found themselves in GM story hour games have noted their relatively low agency. Those who have found themselves in other sorts of games have noted their comparatively greater agency.

And vice versa. I noted earlier in the thread that in a more player facing game(Say yes or roll the dice), I would feel like I had lower agency than in a traditional D&D game. That you feel like those games give you higher agency doesn't change that fact.

These sorts of judgements don't involve supposing that a game could involve higher agency and yet remain GM story hour. They involve observing that GM story hour is constituted by a relatively low degree of player agency.

Sure. And others observe differently. These observations are based on the subjective preference for how a particular game focuses agency. Objectively they don't have greater or lesser agency, since agency is binary. You have it or you don't.

 

[clearstream]

Well, these last few pages have been interesting. I'll just quote Vincent Baker again and leave off responding for a bit, to allow myself time to digest all the disparate views and reflect upon them. Responses will likely come, but delayed. Thank you all for your patience and lively conversation.

About this time of year in 2021 Vincent wrote that

"TTRPGs are no more fundamentally alike than video games, sports, or any other arbitrary game category. Take three ttrpgs and in principle they might be as different from one another as triathlon is from baseball is from hacky sack. Or as different from one another as Mario Kart is from The Wolf Among Us is from Minesweeper.

The act of roleplaying — like, pretending to be someone — is widespread in games, not special to ttrpgs. It’s a technique that games can include, each game for its own purposes, just the same as it might include skill, endurance, memory, pattern recognition, storytelling, randomization, sorting, patience, or anything else.

Roleplaying games are interesting and surprising games in a lot of ways, but they aren’t all fundamentally like each other or fundamentally unlike other games. They’re just, yknow, some games, with all the same kinds of fads, schools of thought, cross-influences, innovations, compromises, and iterations that other games have.

 

[Maxperson]

Suppose that someone said that they don't enjoy tiramisu, because they like to eat deserts in the evening and coffee keeps them awake if they have it too late in the day. It would hardly be to the point to argue that we can't compare the amount of coffee in deserts, because the inclusion of coffee is constitutive of tiramisu.

Okay. Let's use the desert analogy. Desert = agency. Either you have a desert or you don't. We all have preferences for what kinds of deserts we want.

Let's say you enjoy tiramisu because it has caffeine(say yes or roll the dice), but don't enjoy strawberry shortcake(traditional play). You will FEEL like your desert is better(has more agency) due to the caffeine it possesses, while you also FEEL like my desert isn't as good(has less agency), because it has no caffeine.

The same goes in reverse for me and strawberry shortcake vs. tiramisu. It will feel to me like mine is better and yours is worse. Yet when you look at it objectively, we are both having desert(full agency).

The only meaningful examination of deserts(agency) is to compare what they have in them and see what you prefer and why. It's meaningless to compare the subjective feelings.

 

[pemerton]

See my #3165. Is it right that you're claiming that being able to declare actions for one's PC is too general to make any contrasts, while participating in establishing a shared fiction in the course of playing is not.

No.

There are not degrees of declaring actions for one's PC. Either one does or doesn't. There are degrees of participating in and contribution to the establishment of the shared fiction. I've talked about the methods that high player agency RPGs that I'm familiar with use generate a high degree of player contribution to the establishment of the shared fiction, for instance in post 211:

Anyway, the topic of this thread is player agency. To me, it seems obvious that if all players can do is establish "inconsequential", "minor" or "not directly pivotal" elements of the fiction - so that all the significant elements of framing, consequence etc are established by the GM - then their agency is modest at best.

And in order to pre-empt, or at least attempt to pre-empt, confused or incorrect statements about how (say) Dungeon World works: in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.

There may also be techniques that permit the players to declare actions or make decisions pertaining to their PCs' memories. This goes together with the players' establishing goals and aspirations, to overall produce characters that have "thicker" lives, relationships, etc than is typical of much D&D play.

 

[pemerton]

@Maxperson, I don't know why you are equating enjoyment and agency. Some of the best RPGing I have done at conventions has been playing low player agency CoC scenarios. These have fallen under the label "GM's story hour". As a player my sole job was to enjoy what was going on, jump on board the GM's story, and emote my PC's descent into madness. I had very little agency in respect of the shared fiction. But they were fun, because the GM's were excellent performers, the stories were interesting, and I enjoyed my and my friends' emoting.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Okay. Let's use the desert analogy. Desert = agency. Either you have a desert or you don't. We all have preferences for what kinds of deserts we want.

I prefer the Rub al Khali to the Sahara, myself.

 

[Raiztt]

Notice, here, who is actually taking actions. The player playing the criminal sorcerer trying to pay off a debt is not acting. You are acting. You are including elements. You are determining what situations will arise, what values will be put to the test and exactly which conflicts will test them. You have agency. The criminal-sorcerer player does not.


Leaving the unfortunate phrasing aside, then: Insufficient data for meaningful answer, if I am to restrict myself to only that original statement and nothing else. Based on your follow-up statements, like the previous quote, I am forced to conclude that I as a player do not really have much agency. I can describe my character. I am completely dependent on you for any of that description to actually matter in any way, shape, or form. You drive the conflict for the character, I simply provide suggestions for what you could choose to do. I can show intention--obviously, since I chose Dogsbody Jongleur or whatever else as my BG/class combo--but I cannot initiate anything. Only you can do that.

So, I can say after doing a lot of reading, that my answer to the original question ("What is player agency to you?") is this: For my games, either player agency just is character agency, or it doesn't matter at all/is not something I'm even slightly interested in.

Plots aren't driven by protagonists - protagonists react to the plot/what is happening to them. So, you are correct, the player who is outside of the game has virtually no agency, but their character does have agency, which is what matters to me. Which is why I am a simulationist, not a narrativist.

My games are like real life in that things are happening to you, and you must react to those things. You cannot step outside of 'the world' and direct them.

What this thread has taught me is that not only do I not want to run a narrativist game, but I also don't even want to play in one, because only character agency is important to me. I exercise my player agency by deciding if I'll even play in someone's game at all.